A Distributed Mechanism for Probing Overlay Path Bandwidth Using Local Information Exchange

Abstract

Available bandwidth, along with latency and packet loss rate, is an essential metric for the efficient operation of overlay network applications. However, the measurement of available bandwidth creates a larger traffic overhead than other metrics. Measurement conflicts on routeoverlapping paths can also seriously degrade measurement accuracy and cause a non-negligible increase in the network load. In this paper, we propose a distributed method for measuring the available bandwidth in overlay networks that can reduce measurement conflicts while maintaining high measurement accuracy at low cost. Our main idea is that neighboring overlay nodes exchange route information to detect overlapping paths and share the measurement results of overlapping paths to configure parameter settings for available bandwidth measurements. Our simulation results show that the relative errors in the measurement results of our method are approximately only 65% of those of the existing method. The measurement accuracy of our method remains better than that of the existing method when the total measurement traffic loads of both methods are equal. key words: overlay networks, network measurement, measurement conflict, distributed measurement method, information exchange